It's been a great year! Over the past 12 months I've published more reviews than ever before and once again broadened the coverage to include articles about photography, personal projects and reports on equipment that you may not find on other camera review sites.

You've shared my pleasure and pain (and pleasure again!) of attempting to view the final Space Shuttle launches, along with my fun with a rented 500mm lens. You followed Scott Kublin as he wrestled with his decision on a new pro body while also shooting and processing some great Fall HDR photos, and you'll soon read about moderator Bjorn's pilgrimage to the Leica HQ. You saw my first three-way review of the exotic Canon 8-15mm Fisheye, which included reports by action photographer's Stefan Haworth and Scott Kennedy; look out for another article with Stefan coming-up soon. Most recently I teamed-up with Scott Kennedy once again for our GoPro HD Hero 2 review which included a two-part video showing it in action on all the best adventure sports around Queenstown New Zealand. And speaking of Queenstown, I also hope to host my first photowalk around this beautiful town during December.

2011 has also been a great year for social networking, and those who follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and in particular Google+ have hopefully enjoyed all my previews, early image and video samples, behind the scenes work and video hangouts, along with seeing a selection of my own personal photography and the stories behind them. Not following me? Then do so now! Twitter / Facebook / Google+. I also now have an official Camera Labs Google+ page, so please add that to your circles too!

In the very near future, I'm planning on publishing a selection of exclusive photography eBooks! All of this in addition to the core-remit of Camera Labs, which remains providing in-depth reviews of the latest cameras, lenses and accessories, while of course maintaining one of the friendliest forums around. I hope you've enjoyed the reviews that Ken MacMahon, moderator Thomas and myself have done over the past year. It's certainly been an exciting year at Camera Labs, but the best is yet to come!

As always I couldn't do it without you, so I'd like to thank our regular readers, forum members and especially our moderators Thomas, Bob, Bjorn and Ken for keeping the forum one of the friendliest around. And finally an extra-special thanks to those sites which have linked to my articles and anyone who’s shopped through my partner stores or bought me a coffee via PayPal – without you, Camera Labs wouldn’t exist!

I'd love to hear what you think of the site, so in this thread please let me know what you like, what you'd like to see more of, and of course anything you're not so keen on.

Happy Birthday Cameralabs!
One of the best things happening to me in the last 12 month was finding this site. It sure made me a lot more serious about photography!

As for the things I'd like to see more of:
I kinda miss the old plain video tours. Don't get me wrong the new cinematic reviews like 600D VS D5100 or the L500mm are fantastic! But I think everybody enjoyed watching old ones with their "To prove that I'll just wiggle my fingers in front of the lens" - classic!))

Here I find my favourite reviews. And I want to thank everyone for them.

I devoured review videos with Gordon and once mentioned - and this is one of my personal highlights - that after following the reviews here I began to look closely at the pictures that we get daily on TV. Began to see the sharpness of the film lens used, chromatic abberations, colours ... and now I can't help but *think* more about the photos that I encounter. I'd call that a success. Cameralabs has taught me a lot.

Uh-oh, 6 years on internet-time - that's around 30 years in standard-time.
So Camera Labs has now quite some experience under its belt. Not all of which I've followed as I "only" joined Nov. 6th, 2006.
I know of the many internal discussions that we mods had together with you, Gordon, on how to make this an even more attractive place. And the followership of this site tells me that some of the things that CL does must be good stuff. So let us all keep it this way with interesting reviews and helpful, thoughtful, and friendly posts in the forum!
Cheers!

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Wow, it hardly seems possible. But a big Thank You to you, Gordon. You've gently educated us and allowed us room to explore our own interests along the way. And even put up with the occasional bloomers from yours truly. Here's to the next six years: the pace of innovation in some areas is slowing but exciting new stuff keeps arriving as well. Almost too much of a good thing as it is all too easy to get wrapped up in the toys and forget to take enough photographs.